Martha’s Vineyard Hospital employees pursuing nursing degree through MGH Institute

One milestone down, and a few more to go for nursing students at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, who are part of an innovative pilot degree program aimed at stabilizing hospital staffing and retention. 

Three students – Jennifer Dudley, Rachel Vargas, and Rali Ivanova have completed their first clinical rotations at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. They’re enrolled in the MGH Institute’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) degree program, a new frontier for nurse development that hasn’t been attempted in the Mass General Brigham system before. 

“Balancing a full-time non-clinical job with the ABSN program has been challenging, but caring for patients makes it all worthwhile,” said Dudley, a Process Improvement Analyst at MVH. “We see our skills improving with each clinical shift. I feel fortunate to have our clinicals right here at MVH.”

The program, which kicked off in January, was born when Claire Seguin, Chief Nurse and VP of Operations at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, approached then School of Nursing dean Ken White about the possibility of educating hospital employees who wanted to change careers and become nurses.

The typical MGH Institute ABSN program is completed in one year, but this program will be stretched out over two years to allow employees to work part-time while participating. Anyone with a bachelor’s degree in any area of study can earn this nursing degree. While the MVH cohort joins their MGH Institute classmates via Zoom, an instructor is with the MVH students to answer questions. The MVH students also come to the MGH Institute at least once a semester, and Institute faculty travel to the island at least once a semester as well. 

Students completed a Skills Lab and Simulation clinical, an Adult Health clinical rotation on Acute Care, and a Community and Public Health clinical in the community, and online coursework.

“So far, so good,” said Sam Bernstein, co-director of the Institute’s pre-licensure nursing program. “The students are on a medical surgical floor and they’re doing their community health nursing, so they'll be going out into the community using Martha's Vineyard agencies, which I think is great because that's the community that they want to be working in.”

“It’s exciting that we can now consider MVH to be a teaching hospital,” said Vargas, a student who is juggling her duties as Executive Assistant to the Chief Nurse and VP of Operations at MVH. “The experience thus far has been transformative, reaffirming that this is exactly what I want to be doing, at this hospital, with this team.”

Every month, Bernstein and fellow prelicensure co-director Tomison Olayinka, meet with Seguin and Janna Kramer, Nurse Educator at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, to discuss the program and make sure students and faculty have what they need. 

“I’m so proud of the effort the students put in every day,” said Laura Hilliard RN, a clinical instructor at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. “It’s been exciting to be a part of the students’ journey, as well as to be a part of the launch of the first-of-its-kind program, developed between MVH nursing leadership and MGH IHP leadership, to build future nurses at MVH.”

“It's a successful program because it is a genuine partnership where everyone is giving what they need to give on their side,” said Bernstein. “We know that the nation needs more rural nurses, and we haven't yet figured out how to create those. So hopefully this is a step towards that.”

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